11.24.2009

Elaine and Jack LaLanne

Within the last few months my two best friends (her and her) have purchased highly coveted blending contraptions. I, however, am left in the relative stone age with my twenty dollar dinosaur. When I was explaining my jealousy of these high tech gadgets to my mom I saw her get that look on her face - the one where you can practically see her think, "I have just the thing that will help you trump those girls and their schmancy blenders, we'll show them! And tomorrow we will take over the world!" Ok, maybe that's not exactly what her face looks like, but it's not a far cry, either. Sometimes it's blatantly obvious who I get my competitive streak from.

Last year, in attempts to get him to eat more healthily, my mom bought my dad a Jack LaLanne Fountain of Eternal Youth Power Juicer Extraordinaire (or something similarly titled). For the last year it had remained in their garage unopened and, obviously, unused.

My dear, sweet, well-meaning mother gifted this Juicer to me in attempts to offset my feelings of leftoutedness. I used it maybe a dozen times before boxing it back up and it now lives in my garage, a habitat it likely finds comfortable and familiar. It worked very well and made delicious juices - and I got to use the leftover veggie/fruit pulp for a ton of inventive recipes... but, alas, a Juicer is not a Blender no matter how comparatively priced the two devices are.

I did get on particularly great recipe out of it, though. I used the veggie puree/pulp with some seasonings on some potatoes and bam! french fries! So for those of you with the means to make a veggie puree, here's a recipe to duplicate - I had it for dinner last night and will have some more for lunch. Mmm!

Ingredients:


4 large russet potatoes
1/4 cup vegetable or olive oil
2 cups pureed veggie pulp
1/2 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp onion powder
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tbsp 'season all'

First of all, you're gonna want to preheat that oven of yours to 375. Go ahead and line a baking sheet or grease one or whatever. Whatever method you go with isn't really going to work all that well so it's kind of irrelevant and more just for show... I will advise, however, that you use either a glass baking dish or a metal sheet with a lip around the edge 'cause these things are juicy and will otherwise drip all over the bottom of your oven. Unless you're renting or are at your parents or otherwise don't give a damn. It's totally your call.

Secondly, chop up them 'tates into whatever size you like your fries (I prefer 'em big and with the skins on):


Fill a large bowl with cold water and soak your potato bits for 10 minutes.

While those are soaking go ahead and compile all the other ingredients into a large Ziploc bag and mush it all up so the spices are evenly distributed and well incorporated into the veggie mush.

When your tates are done soaking, dry them somewhat with (clean) towels, add 'em to the bag and squish 'em around inside there with all them goodies until it's all pretty evenly coated:


Then just dump the fries onto your (decidedly arbitrarily) prepared baking sheet/dish (if you're like me you can go ahead and sprinkle a top layer of delicious salt over all this mess and squeeze every last bit of veggie pulp out of your bag and onto your fry pile) in as close to a single layer as possible and tuck it into the oven for 25minutes:


Flip after the first 25 and put back in for another 25. From here they may be done or may need longer depending on how small you sliced your fries. If you made them large, like I did, they'll need yet another 25ish minutes (for a total of a lil over an hour). They'll be all brown and crispy looking - you'll know when they're ready, don't worry.

11.22.2009

Got Bored

Made ice-cream out of boredom today:

1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon sugar
1 hefty tablespoon of fresh apple compote
4 cups crushed ice
4 tablespoons salt
2 quart size Zip-loc bags
1 gallon size Zip-loc freezer bag



Place the milk, vanilla, sugar and apple compote into a small zip-loc and let all the air out, seal it and then place that goodie filled bag into another small zip-loc, let all the air out and seal it. Then place that puppy into the larger zip-loc bag. Put in the ice, put in the salt, let the air out and seal it. Gently toss around for 5-10 minutes and voila, ice-cream:

Turnover




A lot of times when I hang out with friends, which is basically constantly, I try out new recipes on them. No one makes better guinea pigs than the people we love most, right? So since I just went with The Gang up to apple hill last weekend and I now have a ton of apples to eat up, I've been secretly squirreling them into every recipe I can think of, whether it's warranted or not. Since today was our weekly Sunday Morning Gaming Group(SMGG) I hatched a decidedly close-fetched plan. SMGG and I have talked forever about making turnovers because when we're playing and someone maybe doesn't realize that it's their turn, sometimes the best way to indicate that a turn is over is to simply say, "Turn over." Now maybe this seems like one of those things that should go without saying... but sometimes blatantly stating, "Turn over," is the best, and somewhat passive aggressive, way to inform someone that said someone should be paying attention because it's their turn... So anyway, saying this all the time has really gotten all of us craving some turnovers. And with that abundance of apples I got last week I ended up promising the gang that I'd make apple turnovers for them this morning.

And I did.

And right about the time they went into the oven, Bee and I saw that we had texts from one of our Members saying, basically, that SMGG would be cancelled.

So I guess I'll have to sacrifice and eat the whole batch. Darn.

Here's the basic 'recipe' for the apple compote filling that I ran with:

10 Fuji apples, washed, peeled, cored and cut into smallish chunks
3 cups water
1/2 cup organic sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp cooking wine or brandy
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
pinch of salt

So first wash/peel 'em:



Then core 'em:



Then slice 'em:



Add water, sugar and spices to a large pot and whisk/simmer until it thickens slightly, about 5ish minutes over medium:


Then add in your prepared apples and simmer with a lid for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the apples are pretty deliciously mushy:



Throw them bad boys into whatever you want. I went the puff pastry/turnoverish route and I was not disappointed:

11.15.2009

Time for a Strategy Change

From now on my new strategy in life is going to be to win at least $5 million in the California lotto. Or lottery. Whichever one is the one with the big bucks. Wait... do you have to buy a ticket to win? No purchase necessary... right?

11.06.2009

Someone...

...Please buy this.

It's close to me. It's close to regional transit of all kinds.

I really don't know what else you need in life.